Nationality English Education New College, Oxford Role Martyr | Name John Ingram Occupation Jesuit | |
Born 1565 Stoke Edith, Herefordshire Died July 26, 1594, Gateshead, United Kingdom | ||
The Blessed John Ingram (1565 – 26 July, 1594) was an English Jesuit and martyr from Stoke Edith, Herefordshire, who was executed in Gateshead on 26 July 1594, during the reign of Elizabeth I.
Contents
Life
Ingram was probably the son of Anthony Ingram of Wolford, Warwickshire, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Hungerford.
He began his education in Worcestershire and attended New College, Oxford. He then converted to Catholicism and studied at the English College, Rheims, at the Jesuit College, Pont-a-Mousson, and at the English College, Rome. He was ordained at Rome in 1589; and then, early in 1592, he went to Scotland. There he befriended many powerful people. He acted as chaplain to Walter Lindsay of Balgavie for 18 months.
Captured at Wark in Northumberland having crossed into England over the River Tweed on 25 November 1593, he was first imprisoned at Berwick; then at Durham, York, and in the Tower of London, where he was severely tortured and wrote twenty Latin epigrams, which survive.
After his ordeal at the Tower, he was sent North again and imprisoned at York, Newcastle, and Durham. There he was tried with John Boste and George Swallowell, a converted minister. At Durham Assizes on the 23rd July 1594 he was convicted under a law, which made the mere presence in England of a priest ordained abroad high treason, even though there was no evidence that he had ever acted as a priest while in England. There is evidence that someone in Scotland offered the English Government a thousand crowns to spare Ingram's life, all in vain. As the authorities in Newcastle were responsible for executions on Tyneside, John was transferred to Newgate Prison in Newcastle and on the day of execution, Friday 26th July, he was taken from the prison across the bridge (now where the Swing Bridge is located) to the Scaffold in Gateshead High Street which was directly opposite what was known at the time as the Papist Chapel, the Chapel of St Edmund Bishop and Confessor, now the Anglican church of Holy Trinity
Death and beatification
Ingram was executed at Gateshead on 26 July 1594.
Holtby gives an account of Ingram's preparations, the prayers he said, his words to the bystanders, and of the execution itself:
"I take God and his holy angels to the record, that I die only for the holy Catholic faith and religion, and do rejoice and thank God with all my heart that hath made me worthy to testify my faith therein, by the spending of my blood in this manner." He was asked to pray for the Queen and he prayed God that she might long reign to his glory, and that it might please him to procure her to live and die a good Catholic Christian prince. With rope around his neck he said more prayers, ending with the psalm Miserere mei Deus, after which, making the sign of the Cross upon himself and saying, In manus tuas etc., the ladder was turned; and being dead, he was cut down, bowelled, and quartered. The Gateshead executioner was paid two shillings and six pence, eighteen pence for hanging his quarters on gibbettes. His quarters were sent to Newcastle, and his head set upon the bridge.
In the Tower of London, John Ingram had cut with a blunt knife on the walls of his cell these words of an Epigram in Latin, "The expectation of a bloody death is another death, which grins at me, her grey hairs steeped in gore." Another Epigram read: "Rocks are quarried, the entrails of the earth, that Dives may have living rock for his tomb. No tomb seek I; and yet shall there be a living tomb for my lifeless body ---- the carrion-crow."
In Rome, at the English College, when the news of his martyrdom reached there, the staff and students sang the Te Deum in the college chapel and wrote against his name 'Martyro insigni coronatus'.
He was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI and his anniversary is 24 July.